Transcript of the Sermon “Discovering God Will”

One of the main subjects of the Christian life is the matter of the will of God. Many times you hear that people are trying to looking and searching for the will of God as if it has been hidden in some obscure location. Some people perceive the will of God as horrible and undesirable. Others think the will of God is like the lottery where one person is very lucky and has the best blessings while the rest of us keep getting tickets trying to figure out God’s will. Finally, any people believe in the dot theology where the will of God is this specific dot and only that dot that there’s one man for you and woman for you and one house and one car and one career and one school and one this and one that. And you’ve got to go through life trying to connect the dots because if you miss the dots, you’re going to be off track. And when it’s all done, the picture of your life won’t make sense.

What is God’s will our life? It is not about what you should be based on your sills and your gifts, but it is about God’s gift for our lives. It is a question that every Christian has asked before. Doing the will of God is the most fundamental and essential pursuit of the Christian life.

Psalm 143:10 New International Version (NIV)

10 Teach me to do your will, for you are my God;

David did not see say, “Teach me to know your will” or “Help me find your will”. He said teach me to do your will. This leads to the assumption that the will of God is not about information and knowing, but it is about obedience and doing.

When Christ was on the cross, he asked that God’s will be done.

John 4:34 New International Version (NIV)

34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

Paul also lived a life in pursuit of God’s will. The goal of apostolic ministry is to stand strong to God’s will.

Colossians 4:12

that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.

And so the very essence of the Christian life is to do the will of God, to be obedient to what God wants, what God desires and what God requires out of love, out of gratitude, out of worship, out of honor, out of holy aspiration and desire, out of the pursuit of blessing and usefulness. For every reason we pursue the doing of the will of God.

What is the concept of the will of God? There are two ways to understand this.

This helps us to see one perspective of the will of God, which God himself fulfills, that will of God, which God himself accomplishes, that will of God which God himself does.

Psalm 33:6 New International Version (NIV)

6 By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

Psalm 33:8 New International Version (NIV)

8 Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the people of the world revere him.

Psalm 33:10 New International Version (NIV)

10 The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.

These verses emphasize the point that we must revere God as the Creator. If we specifically look at verse 10, it introduces the sovereign will of God. That will of God, which he sovereignly does himself. And he will do exactly what he has planned to do in every generation and forever. This is the sovereign will of God. It is the, as some theologians call it, the decretive will of God, he decreed it, or the determinative will of God, he determined it, or the absolute will of God, it is inflexible, it is unalterable. God said he will do it and he will indeed fulfill what he has said.

Isaiah 46:9 New International Version (NIV)

9 Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.

God purpose will be established and all his good pleasures will be fulfilled. God does exactly what he wants, and he is sovereign over the entire universe. Whatever he has purposed he will do. Whatever he has willed, he will accomplish.

Ephesians 1:11 New International Version (NIV)

11 In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,

Few people will arrive to the conclusion from these verses that there is a will of God which he intends to pass perfectly. There is a will of God which belongs fully to him in which no person can bring about any consequence, any event, and any circumstance that would change that eternal purpose. It is the will of God which belongs fully to him, is determined in his purpose and executed by his power. It will be done, it will always be done and nothing other than it will be done.

What is God’s will for man? It is revealed in the Bible. God’s law is simply the revelation of what God desires of man. What is amazing is our rebellion and sinfulness has no negative effect on God accomplishing his own will planned before the beginning of time. Despite our sin, God overrules all our contingencies and our choices and synthesize them perfectly in order to accomplish his perfect will. This is called divine providence. This is a massively significant description of the character of God who can take the infinite number of human choices and contingencies and work them to his own glorious ends.

In our discussion today, however, we have talked the will of God that he himself does, but the main thing aspect of God’s will I want to discuss is God’s will for his people. How do I know what God’s will for my life is? Where can I find a reliable indication of the will of God for my life? Well, I’ve already given you a hint. God has a will for your life. We know that. If God has a will for your life, he wants you to know it. That’s obvious. And if he wants you to know it, and then be sure of this, he didn’t hide it. He would place it in the most obvious place. And the most obvious place would be his word. We can know the will of God for our life from Scripture. And it’s absolutely unmistakable. We will discuss the six components of God’s will for our lives.

First Component

God will is for you to be saved.

2 Peter 3:9

9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

God is willing that you be saved. God wills that you repent. It is God’s will that you be saved from eternal destruction. This is the will of God. So much is it the will of God that he planned the plan of redemption. So much is it the will of God that he sent his son to become the sacrifice for our sins, to make that salvation possible. The son of man has come to seek and to save the lost because the salvation of the lost is the will of the father.

There are many incidents in the New Testament that reflect this expression of God’s will. When Christ was baptized, God responded in a loud voice, “Behold my son, whom I am well pleased, please listen to him.”

1 John 2:17

17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

The one who does the will of God has eternal life. What will of God? The will of God to believe in the son. The will of God is to put your trust in his son. God’s will is that you be saved.

So no person who has rejected Christ, no person who does not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ can ever know the will of God. It’s pointless to seek the will of God in a marriage or a relationship or a job or a career or a life decision of any kind.

What God has for those who love him, the people who don’t love him can’t know. God’s will starts, then, with being saved, which means committing your live in repentant faith to Jesus Christ as the Lord and savior. That’s God’s will. That’s where it starts.

Second Component

God’s Will is for us to be saved but spirit filled.

Ephesians 5:17-18 New International Version (NIV)

17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit,

By the wording of this verse, it implies that if you do not understand the will of God, what are then? Foolish. One might say that is pretty strong language. It is because God’s Will is not hidden and put in an obscure location. It is literally “hiding in plain sight”. The verse is implying that if you do not know the will of God you are just simple-minded and ignorant. In the follow verse, it describes what the will of God is- to be spirit filled.

His will, secondly, is that you not operate in ignorance and foolishness, but that you understand that God’s will is that you be filled with the Holy Spirit, rather than being drunk with wine and conducting yourself in a dissipated way. Why is that comparison there? The issue here is control. Filled is “perao” in Greek and means filling in a controlling sense not in a static sense. When someone says sorrow fills me heart, what are they really saying? If they say they are filled with sorrow, they simply mean that they have lost the ability to balance out their sorrow with positive thoughts or good thoughts or hopeful thoughts. And they have literally succumbed to the dominating power of sorrow. This can correlate to anger and fear.

This is why the scriptures comes the filling of the Holy Spirit with alcohol. Alcohol is a controlling substance. When a person becomes drunk, they have abandoned sanity. They have abandoned reason. They have lost the ability to control their behavior, their speech, their emotion, their mind. They have come under the control of that drug.

In ancient times, people used to do this on purpose. One of the ways people worshipped their gods was through drunkenness, gluttony, and group sexually activity. People believed as they succumb to all this terrible sin they would go past the temporal world and get in contact with the deities.

What does it mean to be controlled by the Spirit? The Holy Spirit is the one who came to dwell within us at the time of our salvation. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. One thing we need to understand is that we are not always controlled by the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 5:19-21

19 speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

This is what being filled with the Spirit means. If you are in Spirit, you are singing songs to one another, and you are constantly giving thanks to God in every circumstance and scenario. If you’re a wife, you’re subjected to your husband willingly and gladly. If you’re a husband, you’re loving your wife. In Ephesians 6:1, if you’re a spirit-filled child, you’re obeying your parents. If you’re a spirit-filled parents, you’re not provoking your children to anger. These are all the behaviors that flow out of being controlled by the Holy Spirit. A life of worship, a life of humility, a life of joy, a life made right in the family, a life made right in the environment of the world where you work and serve, everything finds its appropriate place when you are totally controlled by the Holy Spirit.

Being controlled by the Spirit also means to be dominated by the Word. The Word is inseparable from the Spirit. When we are talking about being spirit-filled, we are talking about being controlled by the spirit. The spirit controls us when we are saturated with the truth- God’s Word. When you are lavishly enriched in the Word of God, it becomes the controlling truth by which the Spirit leads us toward the will of God.

Third Component

God’s Will is for you to be sanctified.

1 Thessalonians 4:3-4 New International Version (NIV)

3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control your own body[a] in a way that is holy and honorable,

What does that mean? God says clearly to abstain from all sex sins. That is pretty self explanatory. In verse four, it commands handle your body to honor God. Handle your body in a pure way. Keep your body pure.

1 Peter 4:2 New International Version (NIV)

2 As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God.

God’s will is that you stop lusting. The lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, pride of life, stop lusting and start pursuing sanctification.

Fourth Component

God’s will is for you to be submissive.

James 4:7

7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

We must be submissive to God, to one another, pastors and elders of your church, to the governmental authorities over us. Wives, be submissive to your husbands. And husbands, be submissive, in the sense that you love your wives and you seek that which fulfills their desire. Humble submission, your life should be characterized in all things by humility, submissiveness, on all levels. That’s the will of God. Humble yourselves, humble yourselves and in due time, God will lift you up. This is his will.

Fifth Component

His will is that we suffer.

1 Peter 3:17

“It is better if God should will it so that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong.”

God wills our suffering. That’s right. God wills our suffering because he knows what it does for us.

1 Peter 2:20

20 But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God.

God is pleased when we suffer and we endure it. You start to suffer for doing what is right and you endure that suffering and trust in your soul to a faithful God. And you are, in a sense, following the example of Christ, who, being perfect, still suffered.

Suffering is part of what God wants to do in our lives. Suffering is what perfects us. Suffering for righteousness’ sake, living such a righteous life in and unrighteous world that the unrighteous world reacts when confronted by such virtue and such devotion and such truth as we live and proclaim for Christ. It is the will of God that you suffer for doing what is right, that you might thereby be humbled and strengthened.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 12 the apostle Paul tells us that he had embraced his suffering. He embraced it because he saw in it the hand of God. He says he was given a thorn in the flesh. He said, “I asked the Lord to remove it three times.” He said, “My grace is sufficient. For you, power is perfected in weakness.” God knows that your spiritual power is dependent upon your weakness and your weakness is the product of your suffering. “Most gladly,” writes Paul, “I would rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me so I’m content with weakness, insults, distress, persecutions and difficulties for Christ’s sake. For when I’m weak, then I’m strong.”

And finally, there’s one other thing. God’s will for you – this is his will for your life, that you be saved, that you be spirit-filled, that you be sanctified, that you be submissive, that you be suffering and finally, that you be saying thanks.

1 Thessalonians 5:18

18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Constant joy, constant prayer filled with constant thanks. Is that what your life is like? Is that you? Are you just overwhelmed with thanks? Are you just pouring up thanks? This is the will of God for you. God’s will is that you be saved, spirit-filled, sanctified, submissive, suffering, and saying thanks all the time. That’s God’s will.

Sixth Component

One final principle we should know before wrap this up. If you’re saved, spirit-filled, sanctified, submissive, suffering and thankful – you ready for this? Do whatever you want. Do whatever you want. Marry whoever you want. Go wherever you want. Work wherever you want. Choose whatever you want. You say, “Whoa. Are you sure?” Absolutely. Because if this is true of your life, guess who’s controlling your wants. Do whatever you want.

Psalm 37:4 New International Version (NIV)

4 Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

If you delight in the Lord, he will plant the desires in your heart.

Let us remember that the will of God is not about knowing but doing. Our priority should not be worrying about whether or not we are making the right decisions every day, so God can create the perfect life for us. If you’re saved, spirit-filled, sanctified, submissive, suffering and thankful, God will synthesize all our decisions and plant in us the desires of our heart in order to unfold and reveal the divine plan that God has planned and every one of us. AMEN.